Character creation
The steps for character creation and the effects of each decision are listed here. Race Race selection affects three things: Your starting attributes, your starting skills, and your starting feats. The bonuses or penalties from your race will be added to the bonuses or penalties from your class which you will choose later. The racial skills will be ones you start with and will have several ranks in them. Each race also starts with zero to several feats which are special abilities unique to that race. Each of these items are something to consider when choosing which race you want to be. While any race can be any class, some races are better suited for certain classes and play types than others. Dwarves and Golems make some of the strongest characters in melee due to bonuses in strength and constitution, meaning they may start with more hitpoints and do more damage. The larger bonuses to those attributes come with lesser bonuses or even penalties to other attributes, however. Thus, those characters make for good specialized fighters, but may lack versatility. As such, even a Golem with a poor charisma score might eventually see success with the perform skill, but it would require a great deal more effort than another race. Of all the things that affect gameplay when creating a character, racial feats are the only ones that are set in stone forever. You can start with a golem warrior and after a lot of training turn him into a capable wizard, but you'll never be able to acquire a feat that makes you resistant to Etherwind, for example. Even stats like speed, life and mana can be increased permanently. Gender Gender makes no difference at all, except occasional pronoun use. Gender is not considered even in prostitution, making this a purely cosmetic choice. Females blush when a stethoscope is used on them. Class Like your race, class will affect your attributes and your skills. These bonuses and penalties are added to your racial ones. A Golem who is also a warrior would receive even more significant bonuses to strength and constitution but take brutal penalties to other attributes. A Juere Pianist would have their racial bonus to performer added to their class bonus, for an even better performer rating. Class is where most of the specialization comes in, as you receive far more skills from class than from race. This will usually determine what sort of character you are making. Warriors are going to get involved in melees, archers will use bows or guns and wizards will cast spells. Other classes, such as Farmer and Pianist get skills that are not specific to combat but will often help in other areas, such as quests or money making endeavors. Attributes This is where those bonuses and penalties from race and class come in. The maximal value is sum of race bonus and class bonus. Bonus has a number value represented by a word description. The progression is as follows: None (0), Slight (1 to 3), Little (4 and 5), Normal (6 and 7), Not Bad (8 and 9), Good (10 and 11), Great (12 and 13), Best (14 or more). Then the game rolls a number for every attribute, where the number ranges from (maximal value/2) to (maximal value). Maximal value/2 is rounded up if maximal value is an odd number. You may reroll these attributes as many times as you want. You are given two "locks" which may be used to lock an attribute at that particular value so that it will remain constant while rerolling the rest. You will want to lock the attributes related to the skills you use the most frequently, or the attributes for which you have the highest bonus. Attributes are used in conjunction with your skills in order to determine how well you do them. A high charisma would help compensate for a low performer value or a high value would make a good performer check even more exceptional. Feats These allow for some additional character customization, giving you additional capabilities. You may pick three at character creation and receive an additional one every 5 levels. While all feats have their own benefits, the Lucky tree is generally considered one of the better ones, as it adds to an attribute that is often more difficult to increase than the other ones. The distance runner tree is worthy of consideration for those who plan on using skills that consume stamina, as stamina is another attribute that is otherwise difficult to increase. Alias Selection Like gender, this has little impact on the game aside from how NPCs address you. NPCs will address you primarily by just your alias, though your name will appear after the alias for messages displayed in Elona chat. So if your alias is Immoral Cat, and your name is Spasm, everyone will see that Immoral Cat Spasm died of starvation in the Puppy Cave. Appearance This affects how your character will look in the game. You may change it later in the game ("portrait" option in character window). As you wear equipment, additional sprites will appear on your character (like gloves, cloak/wings, body armor); these can be disabled by using certain pieces of furniture (dressers). Personal History This page is more important than it looks. Rerolling here affects several things. Your age, height and weight change when rerolling, but these have no effect on the game. Rerolling affects the numbers listed under "Combat Rolls" however, meaning that each time you reroll, it is giving you a different set of equipment. You can reroll to try to get equipment with better damage or protection values. It is possible to start with equipment that already has enchantments. Name The last thing you will fill out before you make your character. If left blank, it will generate a random one for you. Elona+ An additional screen is added that lets you select any skill, adding 9 levels to a learned skill or letting you acquire an unlearned skill and set it to level 10. Elona+ also adds a new category during character generation, titled "Personal Background". It is broken into roughly five categories: your background before adventuring, the reason you left on adventure, a positive trait, a trade off for that trait, and then a final trait (hobby, thing you like, etc.). It is unknown whether this has any effect on gameplay whatsoever. These are untranslated in the English version of the game, and simply appear as "Secret". An exhaustive list, and English translations, are provided below. Menu Japanese= |-| English= Background Japanese= |-| English= Reason For Adventuring Japanese= |-| English= Positive Trait Japanese= |-| English= Negative Trade-off Japanese= |-| English= Hobby/Likes Japanese= |-| English= Category:Guides